Roads to Joy

Maybe it’s that time of life, the time when we all wonder how much we actually have left, or maybe it’s just a set of happy coincidences, or maybe it’s all part of my never-ending search for epiphanies, but for whatever reason, I am currently besotted with clocks.

And the clocks that I’m [still] dealing with are the ones in the New Galloway Town Hall tower. Happily, I’m rewarded with incremental advances, each of which is enough to deliver a frisson of joy to my waiting heart.

Yesterday, once more into the breach, I endeavoured to free the four clock faces so that I could manipulate the drop-cam to let the switch fall on the hour. The idea has been that with the hourly bongs going out at the right time, and with the clock faces twirling freely, and unconnected to the main clock mechanism, they could then be reset to the correct time, tightened up, and ready again to twirl under the command of the central gear. In the image above, the components to loosen are the three retaining screws that attach the individual clock gears to the rod emanating from the central clock house.

The bedevilment, however, involved deciphering a variety of stumbling blocks and earlier work-arounds that mitigated against freeing the individual faces. The first one I’d worked on had been jammed onto the rod by virtue of a small bolt that, now bent, had to be worked free in order to isolate that clock face. Perseverance finally paid off, and I had the first clock free. With that satisfaction, I could assay my luck with the others, and two I could get loose. The final clock, however, as I discovered upon closer inspection with a bright torch, had suffered the indignity of one of its retaining screws breaking off in situ. I was not going to have any luck resetting that face, not just then.

But it was time to drop the switch, so after I’d reset the digital controller to the correct time, at 9:59 that morning I loosened the big double-wing fingernut on the main mechanism and twirled the works around so that the cam was nearly ready to let the switch go. On the stroke of 10:00 I let the cam ease forward. The switch fell, and the controller stirred into action. The strike motor whirred, and after ten sonorous beats, all was silent again in the tower.

So I could proceed to adjust the three freed clock faces to the correct time, which I eventually managed to do, near enough. Since the clock faces are backwards, inside the tower, of course I adjusted the minute hand the wrong way. Clocking [sic!] my error, I re-adjusted, and waited to see if the hands turned under the main gear’s authority. Yes! They did, though it seems I’ve set them a few minutes slow.

The real proof, of course, would come at 11:00 when the clock should deliver eleven bongs, as the minute hand reaches 12. Our house is barely within earshot, but I stood at our front gate and thought I caught a note or two. My aural impression was confirmed when a friendly note from a closer listener came in through WhatsApp: ’You’ve cracked it!’ 

And that will do for my epiphany today. Next week we’ll try to drill out the stubborn, broken retaining screw and set the last clock face right. Maybe we can adjust the other faces closer to the precise time too.

These clocks and their faces are like the gift that just keeps on giving, as long as I keep on persevering. Gosh, what a set of metaphors to be getting on with, eh?!

Maybe life is really all about the search for, and discovery of, metaphor?